The Wonder Engine

by T. Kingfisher

  She slid under the sheets. Grimehug grumbled and made room for her feet. The bed was cool and crisp and soft, and all of Slate’s fears could not keep her from sinking immediately into sleep.

  Four

  Slate dreamed.

  Initially it was nothing much, just the fragmented and absurd world of dreams. She was walking through a house with too many rooms, looking for something. The house was made of her mother’s chambers in the brothel and Slate’s first apartment and the academy where she had taken lessons and for some odd reason, the stable of the inn they had stayed at the third or fourth night on the road.

  She opened a door at random, and found a closet stuffed with trumpets and rune. She closed it. She opened another door, and found another door behind it. She opened that one.

  She fell out into the Shadow Market, flat on her face, and looked up to find Boss Horsehead staring down at her.

  “You crossed me,” said Horsehead, looming over her, impossibly large, the size of a giant. “No one crosses me.” Slate reached for a knife, but she was stuck to the floor, she couldn’t move, and Horsehead was picking her up by the shoulders and she was being swung aloft, with a clank of chains, into one of the crow cages over the Shadow Market.

  She was bolted to the bars, weighed down with chains. The crows circled her, shrieking.

  One landed on each shoulder, and they spoke to each other over her head, in gabbling gnolespeech. Slate asked them to repeat themselves, very politely, but they buffeted her face with their wings. She opened her mouth to scream, and feathers slid down her throat and filled her chest, and then she could not scream, but only cough…

  * * *

  “Slate! Slate! For God’s sake, wake up!”

  Someone was shaking her. She woke up, sucked in a great ragged breath, and began to cough violently. Whoever had woken her pounded her on the back while she choked and spluttered, saying something, but she was coughing too loudly to hear.

  “Breathe,” instructed the person pounding her back. “Breathe. In and out. Easy.”

  After a minor eternity, she was able to breathe again. Her chest ached and her throat felt raw. He was holding her chin tilted back at an angle that left her airway clear, the sort of practiced gesture she’d expect from a healer.

  She groaned and scrubbed at her face.

  When she moved her hands, a handkerchief was dangling in front of her, and that was how she realized who had woken her.

  “Caliban?”

  The knight sat on the edge of the bed, illuminated by a sliver of gaslight through the window. He was holding her up with an arm around her shoulders and he looked distinctly rumpled, but his voice was as calm as ever.

  “Grimehug came for me. He said you were choking, and he couldn’t wake you up.”

  She took the handkerchief and wiped at her face. Her cheeks felt hot. “I feel like I’ve been dragged by a horse.”

  “Another allergy fit? You’re not sneezing…”

  “No, no. More of a night terror, I think.” She smiled weakly. “When you’ve got lungs as overactive as mine, it all gets tied together. Thank you for waking me up.”

  “Your enemies are my enemies, remember? Knight, liege lord?”

  “Oh, that.”

  “What was it?”

  “What was what?”

  “The night terror.”

  “Oh—I—” Slate waved a hand, hoping she hadn’t talked too much in her sleep. “Nothing. Someone I knew once.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He was using the voice on her. The paladin’s voice, calm and patient and absurdly trustworthy. Slate wasn’t sure if she resented that or not.

  She should tell him about the crow cage. If she told him, she would probably feel better.

  If she told him, she’d have to think about Horsehead.

  And at that point, three things occurred to Slate more or less simultaneously.

  The first was that she was naked, except for a sheet that had mostly fallen off while she was coughing. The second was that Caliban was still holding her up. His arm lay across her bare back. His hand was very warm and he was running his thumb across the point of her shoulder without seeming to realize it.

  The third, unfortunately, was that with her hair hanging in sweaty strands and her face red and damp and her nose swollen, she was probably about as attractive as an injured mudskipper.

  She hadn’t yet worked out whether the third one negated the first two, when Grimehug bounced up on the bed, and that tipped the balance. Caliban jerked his arm away as if stung, and Slate pulled the sheet up to her chin with a faint sigh.

  Oh, well, probably for the best. Am I even allowed to nail a knight sworn in my service? Is that fraternizing?

  Would he be doing it because he wanted to, or under orders? Does that fall into duty to one’s liege?

  Have I even forgiven him for calling me weak? He did apologize, but then he swore fealty to me like an idiot, and I don’t know if I’ve forgiven him for that, either.

  No. No. This is too complicated. Entirely too complicated. Stick to the mission. I don’t have time for this.

  “You feeling better, Crazy Slate?”

  “Yeah.” She reached out a hand and ruffled his fur. “Thanks, Grimehug.”

  “Glad to help, crazy lady.” Apparently deciding that the evening’s entertainment had ended, the gnole plopped down at the foot of the bed and stretched out again.

  “I should go,” said Caliban.

  She nodded. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “I owed you a midnight waking,” he said, a bit dryly. “And at least you didn’t try to stab me.”

  “You could go out and come in again and I could have a knife ready, if it would make you feel better.”

  He rose. He was wearing a pair of trousers and not much else. Slate didn’t know whether to bless Grimehug or boot him out into the hall.

  God, the knight was stupidly beautiful. She’d seen him without a shirt on before, but usually only in passing, as he shrugged into different clothes. Not with dim blue moonlight lying across his skin, highlighting the muscles from his shoulders down his arms.

  She could see white scars slashed across his chest and she wanted to drag her fingers over each one and feel the way the texture changed from skin to scar and back again.

  “If you need me again—” he began.

  No, no. Being weak again. Paladins don’t take advantage of the weak, even if the weak bloody well wish they would.

  Shoulders like a goddamn ox and a brain to match.

  “I know where you sleep,” said Slate ominously.

  “Yes, and don’t think that doesn’t scare me.” He nodded to the gnole. “Come get me again, Grimehug, if you need to.”

  The door closed.

  Slate dropped back to the mattress with a groan. Four months in a jail cell. No one should look that good after four months in a jail cell. The Dreaming God has impeccable standards.

  Why couldn’t he look like…like Brenner, say? I’d have jumped his bones weeks ago if he looked like a human and not a damn piece of statuary.

  “Grimehug?”

  “Yeah, Crazy Slate?”

  “Why’d you get Caliban?”

  “Couldn’t wake you up. You were choking bad.”

  “No, I know, but—why him? Why not one of the others?”

  There was a long silence from the foot of the bed.

  “Think maybe a gnole won’t answer that, Crazy Slate.”

  “What? Why not?”

  Grimehug shrugged. She felt the gesture ripple across her feet. “Humans all crazy, Crazy Slate. You crazier than most. Humans can’t smell. Leave it alone, maybe.”

  “Huh,” said Slate. I better not push him—we need his help too bad to bully him over something like this.

  Still, she wondered. Despite the limited vocabulary, she suspected Grimehug knew a lot more than he let on, and she wondered what exactly he’d been thinking.

  Five

  “I don’t
like this,” said Caliban. “There ought to be guards.”

  Grimehug gave him a look over one ragged shoulder. “Clocktaurs don’t need guards, big man.”

  “Yeah,” said Slate, “they’re ten feet tall and made out of…whatever that stuff is. What would they need guards for?”

  “To stop people like us,” said Caliban.

  Brenner laughed at that.

  Slate shook her head. “This is a bad neighborhood. They’d need to guard the guards.”

  Learned Edmund looked around worriedly.

  They were in the Old City, near the parade grounds. Grimehug assured them that this was the route that the clocktaurs took out of the Clockwork District.

  And it was, quite clearly, a bad neighborhood. There were rats in the gutters—not skulking, but strolling around as if they had a right to be there. Garbage piled up in the alleys. The houses were run-down and crammed tightly together. Caliban did not see a single gnole.

  Also, Brenner looked more comfortable than he’d been for days.

  “Some gnoles here,” said Grimehug, when asked. “Not worth being seen. Some gnole pokes his head up, maybe some gnole gets his throat slit for fun, eh?”

  Learned Edmund shuddered.

  They crowded into an alley. It was near dusk and the shadows were getting thick. Caliban ran into a garbage bin and cursed.

  “I’d tell you to be quiet,” said Brenner, taking a long drag off his cigarette, “but we actually don’t want to startle anyone. So try to clank louder, will you?”

  “Ha ha.”

  The paladin was flanking Slate, one step behind. It reminded him of the first time they had walked together, in the halls of the palace, with Caliban ragged and battered, in too-loose clothes and a season’s growth of beard.

  He expected that few people would recognize him as the same man. Slate looked exactly the same, though, her face still as mobile and expressive.

  He couldn’t remember now if she had always been bad at hiding her feelings, or if he had gotten better at reading them.

  Last night, it had been blatantly obvious that her night terror was actually about something real and present and probably about to crash on all their heads. Caliban would have found this rather alarming, except that he’d had his arm around her naked shoulders and concentrating on the fact that she was lying to him was the only thing that kept him from making a fool of himself right there.

  Well, that and Grimehug.

  It was very difficult to seduce a woman in front of a gnole. There was something about them that was the very opposite of romantic. Probably the smell of wet dog.

  Which was for the best. The strong do not take advantage of the weak. Or the…errm…the equally strong who happen to be having a moment of weakness. As the case may be.

  …and if I’d said any of that out loud, she’d probably have shoved me out a window in full armor. So really, it’s for the best.

  The alley opened onto a narrow street. It was dark and the few unbroken windows were not lit. Slate frowned.

  “That’s a bad neighborhood,” she said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder the way they had come, “but this street used to be the border. It was always pretty lively. There’s even some nice houses on the other side. What happened?”

  “Three guesses,” said Brenner, “and they all start with clockwork.”

  Caliban sighed.

  They waited. The shadows got longer and melted together.

  “How long until the clocktaur comes?” asked Slate quietly.

  Grimehug shrugged. “Usually come out around now. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later.”

  “I imagine we’ll hear it coming,” said Learned Edmund.

  They did not wait long.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  “There’s your clocktaur, Crazy Slate.”

  Slate put a handkerchief to her face pre-emptively.

  The windows rattled as the thumping grew closer.

  Caliban put his hand on his sword. It was a useless gesture and he knew it, but his body felt better for it, even if his mind did not.

  The clocktaur came into view at the end of the street.

  Two gnoles were jogging along in front of it. Grimehug leaned out of the alley mouth and waved cheerfully. One of the gnoles waved back.

  “Eh! Grimehug!”

  “Eh! Cobble!”

  Brenner made a brief, abortive move forward. Slate put a shoulder in front of him. “It probably knows we’re here,” she hissed. “The point is that right now it doesn’t care.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not sneezing.”

  Brenner subsided.

  The clocktaur pulled alongside the alley.

  It was one thing to see them marching and know the beasts were tall—it was another to see it pass a dozen feet away. The clocktaur’s blunt head was even with the bottom of the second-story windows. Caliban could see gears on it, turning, all of them the color of old ivory and none of them doing anything he understood. He heard Slate draw a breath and hold it and go very still.

  And then it was past them. It stomped on down the street, accompanied by the gnoles. Caliban was amazed that the stones did not shatter under the thing’s feet.

  It did not turn its head or acknowledge their existence. It did not acknowledge anything’s existence. When it turned at the end of the street and turned, it seemed to be following a pre-ordained path. The gnoles scampered out of its way.

  The five of them stood in silence for a moment, broken by the sound of Learned Edmund opening his notebook.

  “It can’t work,” he muttered, sounding distressed. “Those gears shouldn’t do that. It moves like a beast, not like a mechanism. How did anyone ever make that?”

  No one had an answer. The scholar scribbled a few notes before closing his notebook again. “Too dark to write,” he muttered. “We should go back.”

  “I wonder if they heal?” mused Caliban. “Beasts heal. Mechanisms don’t.”

  Grimehug shook his head. “Seen one bash into another one once. Walked into each other. One got a chunk knocked off it. Could tell that one by the hole ’til they all marched out.”

  “That’s useful,” said Learned Edmund. “Thank you, Grimehug.”

  “How’s the smell?” asked Brenner in an undertone.

  Slate wiped her nose. “Not bad. A little rosemary, but that’s all.”

  “Oh, well,” said Learned Edmund, sounding a bit more cheerful. “If I may venture a hypothesis?”

  “Venture at will.”

  “It would seem that your—mmm—talent is perhaps a form of weak precognition? It is warning you about things that may be dangerous. Since this clocktaur is not dangerous to you, the effects are significantly weakened.”

  “Could be,” Slate admitted. “Though it’s not always about danger.” She shot Caliban a look he couldn’t read. “Still, I’m not complaining…”

  She leaned out of the alley mouth and looked in the direction that the clocktaur had gone. “Well, at least we know why that street’s empty now. Can’t imagine you’d want that walking by every—”

  “’scuse me, darlin’,” said Brenner quietly, “but we’ve got friends.”

  They all turned.

  There were men in the alley. They did not look friendly. Caliban could see at least four, and one of them had a rather large knife out.

  “See, I knew this was a bad neighborhood,” said Slate, to no one in particular.

  “This is a poor idea, gentlemen,” said Caliban. “You should leave.”

  The footpads did not look impressed.

  “We are capable of defending ourselves,” he added.

  If possible, they looked even less impressed. Brenner snickered.

  “You want to try?” asked Caliban over his shoulder.

  “Sure.” Brenner raised his throat. “Sod off, you bastards, and we won’t kill you.”

  One of the footpads spat.

  Caliban felt mildly gratified by Brenner’s failure, right up unti
l the first man charged.

  Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

  There were too many of them. His sword was absolutely useless in an alley this narrow and he didn’t have a shield. On the other hand, he was wearing chainmail and a rather thick cloak. Cloth bound up knives remarkably well. And it didn’t look like a very good knife to begin with.

  For lack of anything better to do, Caliban pushed Slate behind him and punched the footpad in the face with a mailed fist.

  The man staggered back. Either he hadn’t been expecting resistance, or he hadn’t been expecting quite so much of it.

  Caliban darted a glance behind him. I have to stay between them and the others…

  “Can we talk about this, gentlemen?” asked Slate, from somewhere in the vicinity of Caliban’s left elbow. “I’m sure no one wants this to turn ugly—”

  The first footpad pulled his hands away from his nose, which was streaming blood. “Ob show you ubly!” His compatriot made short stabbing motions with his knife.

  Slate sighed.

  “Now?” asked Brenner quietly.

  “Fine.”

  And then Brenner moved.

  Caliban didn’t even see it happen. It didn’t look like he was doing anything. Brenner just walked forward, very calmly, and lifted both hands.

  Both footpads clutched their throats and fell against the walls of the alley.

  The cause of this appeared to be a pair of knives stuck into their necks.

  One made a valiant effort to stab Brenner on the way down. Brenner leaned to one side and looked at the next pair of footpads in the alley.

  “Well?” he said.

  The sounds of running footsteps died away. Grimehug sat down and scratched.

  “Amateurs,” muttered Brenner.

  “I will admit it. I am impressed,” said Caliban.

  The assassin shrugged. “It’s easier when they stand close together like that. They get in each other’s way more than yours.”

  Learned Edmund sketched signs in the air—blessings or requests for mercy, Caliban couldn’t say. His skin looked gray.

  “Well,” said Caliban. “This has been…educational. I suppose we should report this attack to the—Slate!”